The internet has gotten 3x shittier in the last 12 months.
There’s a reason for it, people don’t push back enough. We all need to push back more than we have been.
They’re noticing the pushback so far, but they’re thinking they can break through it and come out victorious on the other side.
Do you really want to pay a monthly fee to be forced to watch commercials?
The whole point of commercials was that you didn’t have to pay otherwise to watch the show.
I’ve cancelled everything in my life that requires a monthly payment (asides vehicle and rent).
It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s that I’m fucking sick of it.
^ This. 💯
It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s that I’m fucking sick of it.
And that’s how they win, it’s what they count on. It’s a death by a thousand cuts for us and more profits for them.
Don’t give up now, you won’t just fail yourself, you’ll fail everyone, if you do.
Apparently this is how cable started, and then they did the same thing lol
That was in back before the Internet though.
The internet was invented in the 60s
I know, I was there. But I’m talking about when it was used by the larger general public, which was in the 90’s. Before that, it was people dialing up on modems to BBS’.
Eternal September is real. It’s sad
Eternal September is real.
Partly, this is because “the free market will solve it” is just a neoliberal lie. Sometimes, there’s simply no other choice as corporations race each other to the bottom.
So this streaming service might have gotten shitty, espensive or unethical, but you can move to another right? Oh no, looks like they’re shitty and unethical too, just slightly differently.
Then in six months time, they’ve each absorbed one another’s shitty, greedy practises anyway, ensuring consumers are fully exploited with nowhere else to go.
But the true power of neoliberalism lies in its giant book of premade excuses, so neoliberals (or neoliberals in disguise) will of course read from the next page:
“Oh that’s just because there isn’t enough competition. We just need to deregulate heavily and allow companies to do whatever the streaming equivalent of dumping toxic by-products in the river is!”
But of course, that won’t ever come true either. The companies that already exist will grow more profitable polluting the river and new entries into the market will be either stamped out, bought and stripped for parts or enshittified by the same greed over time.
Following the flowchart taught at exclusive, expensive schools the world over, the next excuse is to blame the consumers.
“Oh if people really cared, they’d simply stop buying things entirely. But they don’t, because these companies continue to bring in record profits. So secretly, consumers actually love their chocolate being picked by child slaves”.
While they do fight back with boycotts, public outcry and (in this case) things like password sharing and piracy, it’s nothing companies can’t crush if it looks like it might actually dent their profits.
At some point, consumers need to pick their misery and the choices are bleak but obvious.
They can accept the minor misery of advertising, even as they pay a subscription, just like the corporation knew they would.
They can escalate their own misery further by boycotting the entire platform or industry.
But the moral high ground doesn’t make spending your few hours of personal time each day staring at the wall suddenly as entertaining as whatever content you’re no longer watching.
Also, the company doesn’t care. That was part of their calculations and they’re still making even more money.
Or finally, they could maximise their misery and actually do something, like busting out the guillotines or becoming a politician that opposes neoliberalism yet is somehow allowed power.
So anyway, people are tired. The fight never ends and some people have fought it for 50 years already. Encourage them to take the third option by all means, but don’t shame them for taking the first option.
They might already be miserable enough.
And the thing is, the product everyone’s got their butts in a bunch over is garbage television. Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, HBO Max, Maytag Plus, there’s nothing good on any of them.
[very verbose initial response]
Honestly don’t mean this as an insult, but you might want to consider being more concise, so that your point comes across better.
So anyway, people are tired. The fight never ends and some people have fought it for 50 years already. Encourage them to take the third option by all means, but don’t shame them for taking the first option.
I’m not purposely trying to shame people, but I’ll definitely get on their cases if they don’t push back and let this crap continue.
It’s called consumer advocacy, and it shouldn’t be shamed away and not done. Those who are causing the problems in society would benefit the most if this happened.
If we all work together, it’s been proven that it does turn things around.
They might already be miserable enough.
It’s not my fault they’re that way, it’s the fault of the people making society horrible so they can selfishly make more money for themselves, which must be fought against.
The ones making Society horrible definitely win when no one pushes back.
Honestly don’t mean this as an insult, but you might want to consider being more concise, so that your point comes across better.
I’m cool with ranting. I enjoy the act of writing, blogs are long dead and it’s important to articulate why so many things in the world are fucking shit.
If we all work together, it’s been proven that it does turn things around
When?
The ones making Society horrible definitely win when no one pushes back.
They also win when people do push back, because thats how the game has been rigged. The extent of the public’s power is making them win slightly less.
The only way to stop companies doing unethical things is strict regulations, ruthlessly enforced. The only times “consumer advocacy” ever works is when the government steps in, which is why the ultra wealthy go to so much effort to ensure they never do.
One good person in politics, with power, is worth a million people boycotting.
If we all work together, it’s been proven that it does turn things around
When?
Unions.
They also win when people do push back, because thats how the game has been rigged.
Strawman.
The only way to stop companies doing unethical things is strict regulations, ruthlessly enforced.
Its the most important way, but not the only way.
One good person in politics, with power, is worth a million people boycotting.
Definately agree with this. But its not a zero sum gain, an either/or. Both can happen, and increase the odds of success.
the money is drying up, gotta find new ways to monetise
All these services turning into shit, are the services without a viable business model to begin with. What I find interesting is that it is obviously possible to become leading in a field, just by burning investors money.
It wouldn’t matter if they were drowning in money, if you told them they could have a few pennies more from each customer, they’ll do it. It’s how greed works.
Covid kindness is over. Buckle up buckaroos.
The pendulum is swinging back towards the monopoly model that destroyed cable. Time to dust off the old Jolly Roger and teach streaming an old lesson of what happens when you price gouge people.
I keep saying, we already fought this war, we already won.
Fuck around and find out 🏴☠️
People were obviously pissed off at cable’s fragmented model, but what killed it was the existence of video on demand services over the internet. The fact that at a certain point Netflix had everything certainly helped in adoption, but the biggest factor was not having to view at a specific time.
There is no such killer improvement on the horizon. All there is is the fragmented streaming market, or piracy.
Those on demand services arose to plug the hole of piracy.
Yarr, the killer improvement was here all along!
I’m baffled by the unrealistic demand for constant infinite growth from corporate shareholders and management. Those days are numbered.
It’s basically one massive Tragedy Of The Commons (if one is being nice, Ponzi Scheme if one is not being nice) were “somebody else” is supposed to pay people good salaries and “somebody else” is supposed to pay the taxes that support the whole damn structure in which these people are getting rich and get to keep their riches and “somebody else” is supposed to “buy my shares” at a higher price.
Everybody expects “somebody else” to take on the costs of keeping the system going all the while cashing in on all the things only possible thanks to that very same system they contribute into the minimum they can get away with.
It makes all sense for a single economic actor to act in a purelly extractive way when all others have a more balanced economic posture, but the problem is that over the last 4 decades ever more of the economic activity has passed into the hands of such people and now most of it is done like that (which is why “rent seeking” is so common) and the rest of the economic actors (the ones who produce rather than extract) can’t keep up anymore, hence why we’ve reached a point were the broadening of both financial empoverishment and fall in quality of life - i.e. the things that can be purchased with the dwindling money most people earn are themselves getting worse) has become very visible and even painful for many.
Tell me you just woke up from a 50 year coma without telling me you just woke up from a 50 year coma
Indeed, but no one knows what that number is. Corporations are currently of the mindset of “that will happen in the distant future, so we can keep going.” Of course, eventually, that distant future will become the present and things will collapse, but they’ll keep saying it’s in the future until then.
With Netflix already having ads we are now 75% of the way to “cutting the cord” going back to reinventing cable again.
And that’s why people started sailing the high seas again.
Arrrrrr! RD be the GOAT.
Fr. Stremio is everything.
https://youtu.be/Th6PW5VwDFI?si=EvzuXbkiQGoeTW3C
Honestly everytime I have to feel proud for sailing I dance like an idiot while the magnet links are being being pasted on the real debrid
Indeed.
- Ad-blocking (before anything online)
- DHT crawler, or index sites if DHT has too many results
- right-click/long-press on magnet URL
- copy link
- paste magnet link
- remove tracker URLs (not needed)
- go
- enjoy
Hm, 8 steps, is one more than the 7 stages of grief; but I’ll take this over yet-another subscription service that continually degrades in quality for the dollar.
What is a DHT crawler?
if it was still just netflix, and everybody didn’t have their own streaming service, that would be different.
but when you add up netflix, prime, disney, paramount, peacock, max, and whatever else, the wallet definitely says it’s just like cable.
do one at a time and rotate, maybe have one you ‘always’ have. you can’t watch 10 different services at once anyway.
Or just download what you want and say “fuck ‘em”
“Again”?
I’ve still been out here since Napster. Welcome back aboard, we kept the torrents warm for you.
What are the cool kids using these days?
Seedboxes. Download the torrent on someone else’s computer, and then directly download it to yours through an encrypted connection. Sorta like a “money-laundering” for pirated content.
Honestly still just using Qbittorrent with a VPN; it’s a dream now that fibre is pretty ubiquitous. Mine hit 100MB/S yesterday, a 1.4Gb file takes about 10 seconds
I was using torrents for years before I started messing with Usenet. Now I’ve got it set up it’s easy to grab pretty much anything and at higher quality than before.
@OldWoodFrame @ZeroCool yeah I will never, Comcast/Xfinity are total scum bags and I would pay extra to never give them money ever again. Unfortunately I am forced to use them for Internet, there’s no way I’m paying for their cable TV programming.
Some of us never stopped sailing the high seas matey. Yarrrrr!
Seems like a lot of companies are testing how much they can get away with lately.
Yes and people are paying unfortunately Netflix succeeded and now everyone is trying ads 😔
So I’m really confused about the whole Netflix thing. It hasn’t asked me to set a household location and the whole no password sharing thing was supposed to have taken effect back in May, right? Since May, my family has continued to use Netflix as if nothing has changed and we said if they try to charge us extra, we will cancel. Our Netflix is regularly used at 4 different “households” and they have yet to charge a fee and have not automatically set a household like they claimed they would.
I was talking about advertisement in Netflix
This happens when you have to grow endlessly and hit a ceiling (in this case, number of users). Then you have to squeeze those users further so the numbers go up again. Of course you are killing the product in the long run because more and more users cancel but that’s not a big deal to the people making the decisions. (Well, the people doing actual work might object but nobody cares about them.) The shareholders that got obscenely rich will just leech onto the next big thing and the CEOs sail to their next product to ruin with a huge golden parachute. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile, civilisation crumbles and decays, before it burns in the sadly inevitable climate catastrophe.
But Amazon crumbling isn’t civilisation crumbling… In fact, it opens doors for more small business owners.
You are incorrect though. Netflix and Uber (or any ride sharing app) have shown once people are hooked they will pay the increased rate to consume the product.
Call it what is is: GREEDFLATION.
Or maybe capitalism?
Nah, at this point anything subscription related is technofeudalism
Actual management strategy is “you don’t know what your boundaries are until you push against them”
Actual management strategy is “you don’t know what your boundaries are until you push against them”
This is why it’s so important not to get tired and quit, but instead to always push back.
I am not paying to watch commercials. Fuck that.
I think most of us pay for the shipping, the video is just a bonus. That said, their exclusives aren’t that great and they just end up in medusa.
I think most of us pay for the shipping, the video is just a bonus.
You’re not wrong, but the point though is to not reward them for bad behavior.
It’s a death by “1,000 cuts” if you do.
Streaming has essentially become TV packages again. The golden age of streaming is dead, long live Davy Jones!
Will Launch Ad-Free Tier For Extra Fee
So instead of introducing a cheaper tier with ads, they’re forcing customers to pay more?
We have shrinkflation and now adflation.
how are you just allowed to drastically lower the quality of a subscription like this. yeah i’m selling my new streaming service, it has 7 channels, $1 a month. no actually sorry it’s $7, 3 channels, and 2 of those channels just run ads on a loop. thanks for keeping autorenew on.
I pay for Prime for the next day postage, prime video is just an extra i occasionally use. I’ll just pirate their stuff in future and ignore their clunky TV app
Seriously what is with amazon hardware and apps? They are all garbage, lack support, janky in every sense.
Their Fire TV stick one was decent before but has become meh
These streaming companies are giving people more of a reason to use Jellyfin every day
What’s jellyfin?
One of several systems for self-hosting video files. I’ve lost track if Jellyfin is a fork of Plex or what. I personally use Kodi.
I’m using Kodi + Real Debrid for over a year now. Works really great but I have to admit that it’s a bit tedious to setup if you want an experience similar to Netflix for example.
Have you tried Stremio + Real Debrid? It’s a game changer.
I use Emby and have had no issues.
I’ve lost track if Jellyfin is a fork of Plex or what
Jellyfin is a fork of Emby. Plex is proprietary software.
The Jellyfin project was started in early December 2018 primarily as a result of Emby’s decision to take their next release (4.x) closed-source.
Only ever had the 30 day trial. Pirate people. Pirate. Yaps.cc is a new one to try.
Is yaps better than 1377x?
Asking the important questions.
How do I pirate people?
Pirating people is generally considered immoral.
You wouldn’t download a person.
No but people are weirdly okay with making them from scratch.
The making was okay, but now there’s a small dude living in our home. He keeps us up at night, too!
Same here. And she smells really foul on occasion! Maybe some uncured resin?
You can’t go wrong with a VPN (PIA, Cyber ghost, Atlas), and just use QTorrent (open source torrent Software) and look up what you like on Pirate Bay.
Easiest basic option.
You can use a website like Showrss to get an RSS feed of all your favorite TV shows, and have them ready to download with Q Torrent.
For most people this would be sufficient.
If you want to an be clever and set up up your torrent Software so that it never staffs without your VPN.
Having ads in fucking movies makes a service feel cheap / lower value. But the price is staying the same, so where’s that button to cancel?
I ended up googling cancel prime membership, and that led me to a page with a cancel button.
I’d say we crossed the Rubicon on this front decades ago, when in-person, at the theater, movies started showing actual ads and not just trailers before the movie you just paid for (and it was at the same price, of course).
I remember the first time I experienced this in a theater. My GF was like “…the hell?” and people were fucking booing the ads. But it didn’t matter enough - the ads are still here.
And yeah, it still annoys me.
That’s the great part, you can’t cancel.
You can cancel. Source: cancelled recently.
Dear every single streaming service:
MAKE. THE. AD. TIER. FREE. FOR. EVERYONE. STUFF ALL THE ADS IN YOU WANT.
MAKE. THE. AD-FREE. TIER. PAID.
This way people can watch everything without having an elitist “I’M PAYING FOR ENTERTAINMENT” section of the world who are the only ones that can talk about all these new shows unless they sail the high seas with an eye patch on, which is yet another argument for MAKE THE AD TIER FREE FOR EVERYONE.
I agree but … why would they do that when the vast majority currently paying will keep paying and live with the ads. Those that won’t will either cancel (based on the Netflix account sharing experience, this will be small) or pay the higher fee. There’s no way they let people watch for free.
Because it’s the right thing to do and those greedy shits make a fortune off of ads and don’t need our money and okay I know, I know, MORE MONEY. Greedy shits. I mean… wouldn’t the ads be more valuable if they knew more people were watching? Or something?
Look, I’m just trying to get us all free Disney+ here, okay? Help me out here. :)
STUFF ALL THE ADS IN YOU WANT.
It all “ads” up. Right?
I’ll see myself out…
Finally! I’ve been waiting for a good enough reason to cancel Prime
you don’t need a reason to cancel a sub, if you don’t like it, just do it.
I’m addicted to the shipping
deleted by creator
American. Right?
Congratulations on waiting and paying them for a service you didn’t want?
